Complex Quotes - page 62
The LGBTQ movement also has legitimate gripes in the West. The same framework for activism, however, cannot be blindly applied to India where the tradition has had a far more complex posture on homosexuality that is vastly different from the closedmindedness in the Abrahamic religions. I.
Rajiv Malhotra
Western academics not only produce critical editions of dharma texts but determine the very categories of the discourse, the manner in which complex words and situations are contextualized, what is included as interesting and relevant (and what is left out), which social theories and textual hermeneutics are to be used, and who the authorities are in matters of interpretation. Engaging in sweeping generalizations, the Western academy routinely passes judgement on whether Hinduism is a legitimate religion, how and when it should be discussed (if at all), and who its authorized spokespersons are. All of this causes many in the dharmic traditions to doubt the legitimacy of their culture, especially in relation to the established, prevailing taxonomy.
Rajiv Malhotra
Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of the state necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too.
William D. Tammeus
Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
For the Negro, therefore, intelligent guides of family planning are a profoundly important ingredient in his quest for security and a decent life. There are mountainous obstacles still separating Negroes from a normal existence. Yet one element in stabilizing his life would be an understanding of and easy access to the means to develop a family related in size to his community environment and to the income potential he can command. This is not to suggest that the Negro will solve all his problems through Planned Parenthood. His problems are far more complex, encompassing economic security, education, freedom from discrimination, decent housing and access to culture. Yet if family planning is sensible it can facilitate or at least not be an obstacle to the solution of the many profound problems that plague him.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I have spoken of the forces of which judges avowedly avail to shape the form and content of their judgments. Even these forces are seldom fully in consciousness. They lie so near the surface, however, that their existence and influence are not likely to be disclaimed. But the subject is not exhausted with the recognition of their power. Deep below consciousness are other forces, the likes and the dislikes, the predilections and the prejudices, the complex of instincts and emotions and habits and convictions, which make the man, whether he be litigant or judge.
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age.
Ivan Illich
The history of science is a long unbroken chain of elaboration, deviation, and rectification, re-creation, followed by reassessment, renewed deviation and rectification, and renewed creation. It has been a long, arduous course, and we have hardly begun. It adds up to a mere two thousand years, interspersed with long arid stretches. The living world is hundreds of thousands of years old and will probably go on existing for many centuries to come. Life is constantly moving forward t never backward. Life is growing ever more complex and its tempo is accelerating. Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.
Wilhelm Reich
Today the need both to maintain a welfare state, i.e. a parasite State at home, and to support a huge and ever-growing burden of armament cost makes it absolutely essential for developed capitalist countries to secure the maximum return in profit from such parts of the international financial complex as they control.
Kwame Nkrumah
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature.
C. A. R. Hoare
By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier generations of computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need elaborate user interfaces to support huge application programs. These structures demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. It's as if we had asked for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy.
Jef Raskin
Fossil fuels allowed the human race to operate... complex systems at gigantic scales. Renewable energy sources are not compatible with those systems and scales. Renewables will not be able to take the place of oil and gas in running those systems. The systems themselves will have to go. Even many "environmentalists” and "greens” of our day seem to think that all we have to do is switch inputs. Instead of running all the air conditioners of Houston on oil- or gas-generated electricity, we'll use wind farms or massive solar arrays; we'll have super-fuel-efficient cars and keep on commuting over the interstate highway system. It isn't going to happen. The wish to keep running the same giant systems at [a] gigantic scale using renewables is the heart of our illusions about solar, wind, and waterpower.
James Howard Kunstler
The idea of comparative advantage works when there is a complex local economy intact in the background of each trading partner's specialized item of production, with a variety of social roles and occupational niches to support the long-term project of community. But a locality geared to doing only one thing for export is... a slave system based on the extractive economics of mining. [...] One group had all the cheap labor, and another group had all the capital, and for a while, one group made all the things that the other group "consumed.” Thus, comparative advantage became, for a time, a con game strictly for the benefit of large corporations, which ended up enjoying all the advantages while the localities sucked up the costs.
James Howard Kunstler
